COLUMN -

Eric Holder's power waltz with the press

June 02, 2013|Reuters

(Jack Shafer is a Reuters columnist but his opinions are hisown.)

By Jack Shafer

June 2 (Reuters) - The Washington journalism establishment,which allows federal officials to go off the record every minuteon the minute, got a little picky this week after AttorneyGeneral Eric H. Holder Jr. invited reporters and editors overfor an off-the-record meeting about the Department of Justice'shandling of the investigations of national security leaks to FoxNews Channel and the Associated Press.

New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson sent her pithyregrets: "We will not be attending the session at DOJ. It isn'tappropriate for us to attend an off-the-record meeting with theattorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively coveringthe department's handling of leak investigations at this time."The AP sent a similar snub, as did CNN, McClatchy Newspapers,the Huffington Post, CBS News, NBC News, Reuters and Fox News.

"If the government wants to justify its pursuit ofjournalists, they ought to do it in public," McClatchy's JamesAsher said.

What made the face-off so delicious was the way it pittedtwo self-righteous and pompous entities against each other. Onthe one side, you've got the government, which wanted to keepsecret the thinking behind its devious, but legal, series ofsubpoenas and search warrants directed at journalists, whilestill blabbing about it. On the other, the press, which swoonsfor these sorts of sit-downs as long as the meeting isn't publicknowledge, because such revelations makes them look likesuck-ups and collaborators, which they can be.

Had Holder stealthily invited a couple of bureau chiefs andeditors over to his place for afternoon cookies and milk to askfor their help in getting out of his PR pickle, of appearinganti-press, I'm sure most would have obliged him and maintainedthe requested omertÃ . But that wasn't the attorney general'sstrategy. In order to relieve the anti-Holder political pressurethe press has exerted in the past two weeks and the calls fromseveral corners for his resignation, Holder needed to publicizethe soiree. The purpose of the meeting was not to explain orapologize or promise to change Department of Justice policy. Thepurpose of the meeting was to have a meeting, and to begin a"dialogue" with the press over its "concerns" so the press wouldgive Holder some breathing room.

Exactly who was using whom still needs to be sorted out. WasHolder exploiting the press by pretending to seek its counsel,or was the press boosting its own status by telling Holder toshove his off-the-record invitation? One Twitter user almostuntangled the weave of hypocrisy with this succinct sentence:"Journos decline a secret talk w/ #DOJ about how DOJ can bestrespect & protect journos' rights to secret talks."

Because the press is too decentralized to congeal into aneffective cartel, the Department of Justice found another way tomake its hour-long Thursday afternoon get-together happen.

Journalists from the Washington Post, Politico, the WallStreet Journal, New York's Daily News and the New Yorker agreedto attend, and Holder whispered into their ears his minor wordsof remorse. How do we know what Holder whispered if the meetingwas off the record, which literally means the information can'tbe shared? Because the Department of Justice relented, allowingthe press to "describe what occurred during the meeting ingeneral terms," as the Washington Post's coverage put it.

(Additional meetings like yesterday's are planned for thenear future, and given that they're no longer off the record youcan expect more news organizations to attend. My employer,Reuters, citing the changed ground rules, sent representativesto a session today.)

The Washington Post's news account of yesterday's meeting,which cites "participants" as its sources, finds Holder"acknowledging criticism" that his department had grown tooaggressive. Acknowledging criticism is not the same as agreeing,of course, as all passive-aggressive adepts know.

The Post story continues to explain Holder's "broadcommitment" to "update internal guidelines," as if antiquatedguidelines were the problem and a new review the solution. Butthe existing guidelines are fine. Self-imposed and observed byboth Democratic and Republican administrations, the currentDepartment of Justice guidelines remind attorneys general towalk "en pointe" whenever contemplating the subpoena ofinformation from journalists or the issuance of search warrants.

Fine-tuning the guidelines won't protect reporters and theirsources as long as the attorney general still goes wild withsubpoenas and search warrants in leak investigations, as Holderdid in the Fox News case and his deputy, James Cole, did in theAP case. Politico reported that "Holder stopped short ofoffering any concrete changes to the guidelines."